Louis Léopold Robert

See also: Robert

Louis Léopold Robert is a painter Suisse born the May 13rd 1794 with the Éplatures (La Chaux-de-Fonds, Suisse) in a modest family, 7 days after the fire which almost entirely destroyed the village. He carries out a happy childhood near a father clock and watch maker-assembler of boxes.

After a schooling with Porrentruy (the Swiss Jura/), it enters in training to Yverdon-the-Baths (Vaud) but, in 1810, share for Paris where it follows a training of engraver near the loclois Charles-Samuel Girardet. It is allowed in 1812 in the workshop of Jacques-Louis David, where it starts to paint and learns engraving there. It obtains in 1814 the second Grand Prix of Rome of copper plate engraving.

With the fall of the Empire, the Principauté of Neuchâtel becomes again Prussian and Léopold Robert loses his French nationality. It is then put except contest at the Grand Prix of Rome where it would contribute for obtaining the first price. Of return to La Chaux-de-Fonds it paints many portraits which contribute to its fame in the middle-class neuchâteloise. The destiny in the person of F. Roulet de Mézerac comes at the right moment to draw L. Robert from the trouble and the moroseness. Its generous patron allows him to continue his studies of paintings to Rome where it remains 13 years, until in 1831.

The chance smiles to him, the many families of brigands will be used to him as models and its compositions of Italian scenes in costumes attract towards him the admiration and the customers of an elite. He can finally refund his debts and accepts innumerable orders.

In 1825, it attends the living room of M {{me}} Récamier and travels to Naples and in various Italian areas. Attracted by the monumental compositions, he works with the one of those, the four seasons, for the Salon of Paris. The return of the pilgrimage of the Madonna of the Arc, first composition, gains a great success with the Living room of Paris of 1827. The table is bought by the king Louis-Philippe.

In 1829 it travels in Italy, in the Marais Pontins in particular, and meets the Prince Napoleon and his wife Charlotte Bonaparte with which it falls in love. In 1831 its triumph with the Living room of Paris, with the Halt of the harvesters in the marshes Pontins , is worth the cross of the to him Légion of honor which the king gives to him in person.

Following the disorders of 1832 in the Papal States, it starts from Rome. After a halt with Florence where its hopes relating to Charlotte Bonaparte are disappointed, it is established with Venice. He undertakes his last monumental composition, that of the season of winter, the departure of the fishermen of the Adriatique. Its hardly completed table, it sinks in a deep depressive state and puts an end to its days, (1835).

If its works fell little by little into the lapse of memory, its birthplace will baptize its principal artery of its name.

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